Manuel Montt

Manuel Montt (4 September 1809-21 September 1880) was President of Chile from 18 September 1851 to 18 September 1861, succeeding Manuel Bulnes and preceding Jose Joaquin Perez. He was the founder of the National Party of Chile.

Biography
Manuel Francisco Antonio Julian Montt Torres was born in Petorca, Chile on 4 September 1809, the son of Catalan immigrants from Spain. He became a lawyer in 1833 and served as rector of the Institutio Nacional from 1835 to 1840, and he served as Interior and Justice Minister under President Manuel Bulnes. In 1851, he was elected President of Chile as a Conservative Party of Chile member, and he immediately suppressed a liberal revolution. The authoritarian Montt represented the conservative oligarchy, but he also worked on the economic and social progress of the nation by asserting the state's right of patronage in Chile's Roman Catholic Church, supported the abolition of restrictions on buying or selling bequeathed landed estates, made advances in commerce and banking, codified Chilean laws, strongly promoted public education and immigration, and colonized the area south of the Bio-Bio River. He encouraged German immigration to southern Chile, and, in 1857, he founded the National Party of Chile as a splintergroup from the Conservative Party. He left office in 1861 and died in 1880.